In the drilling and completion industry, the formation of boreholes for the purpose of production or injection of fluid is common. The boreholes are used for exploration or extraction of natural resources such as hydrocarbons, oil, gas, water, and alternatively for CO2 sequestration. Many of the world's oil and gas wells produce from unconsolidated sandstones that produce formation sand with reservoir fluids. Problems that are associated with sand production include plugging of perforation tunnels, sanding up of the production interval, accumulation in surface separators, and potential failure of downhole and surface equipment from erosion. Soft formation wells require specialized sand control completion practices to allow hydrocarbons or other fluids/gas or combination of to be produced without formation sand. While it is important to effectively prevent sand production, it is equally important to do so in a way that does not hinder a well's productivity.
Thus, liners, screens, and gravel packing have been employed in order to control formation sand production. Gravel packing is a completion procedure that is performed to prevent sand production from unconsolidated sandstone formations and high production rate wells. It consists of placing a screen or slotted liner in the borehole wherein the borehole may be an open hole or cased hole, then filling the perforation tunnels and the annular area between the screen and the casing or open hole with specially sized, highly permeable gravel pack sand. The formation sand bridges on the gravel pack sand, and the gravel pack sand bridges on the screen, such as wire-wrapped screens. For gravel packing, the gauge of the screen should be sized to prevent the passage of the gravel-pack sand. The screen diameter should be as large as possible and yet leave adequate room for packing gravel. The combined thickness of the screens, liners, and gravel pack must be taken into consideration as it reduces a maximum inner diameter of a production tubular and may ultimately limit production of downhole fluids.
Intelligent well systems are being more commonly employed to control anchor monitor downhole components. Such systems can assist in the collection and monitoring of downhole data and can be used to remotely control reservoir zones to optimize reservoir efficiency. Well monitoring instrumentation can measure pressures, temperatures, flow rates (towards the screens or the formation), water-cut, and density in the borehole with both electronic and fiber optic gauges. Intelligent completion technologies, such as zonally isolated, hydraulically adjustable valves and chokes, allow an operator to adjust product inflow from, or fluid injection to, a selected zone. Care must be taken to prevent damage to control lines during assembly, running control lines into a borehole, and during use.
The art would be receptive to improved and/or alternative apparatus and methods for combining sand control with intelligent well systems.